


around this heap of ashes

by queenbaskerville



Series: WIP amnesty [1]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Amnesia, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Canonical Child Abuse, Child Abuse, Child Death, Child Murder, Child Zuko (Avatar), Episode: s01e19-20 The Siege of the North, Episode: s02e01 The Avatar State, Episode: s02e02 The Cave of Two Lovers, Episode: s02e03 Return to Omashu, Episode: s02e04 The Swamp, Falconry, Gen, MuffinLance, Phoenix - Freeform, Phoenixes, Teen pregnancy mentioned, Temporary Character Death, WIP Amnesty, azula develops what seems to be an inexplicable fondness for birds, fanfic of a fanfic, phoenix zuko, yue still dies sorry y'all
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-19
Updated: 2020-12-15
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:22:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 14,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24266581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenbaskerville/pseuds/queenbaskerville
Summary: Katara kills Zuko at the North Pole. It is not the first time he has died.
Relationships: Azula & Zuko (Avatar), Sokka & Zuko (Avatar)
Series: WIP amnesty [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1903435
Comments: 198
Kudos: 2180
Collections: Azula Likes Birds Cinematic Universe, Best of Avatar: The Last Airbender, Identity Crisis, avatar tingz





	1. Siege of the North Part 2

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MuffinLance](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MuffinLance/gifts), [neuronary](https://archiveofourown.org/users/neuronary/gifts).
  * Inspired by [The One Where Zuko's Hair Matches Sokka's and Other Tales](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21632206) by [MuffinLance](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MuffinLance/pseuds/MuffinLance). 



> this first scene in the first chapter is pretty much the same as chapter 29 in muffinlance's "the one where zuko's hair matches sokka's and other tales." much of the dialogue in particular in this first scene is lifted from there. the rest of this story is heavily inspired by muffinlance's idea but pulled from my own head. 
> 
> title from [the poem "phoenix" by hafez translated by ralph waldo emerson](https://poets.org/poem/phoenix). y'all are lucky i didn't give into my impulse and pull a lyric from jennifer hudson's "memory" from the cats musical
> 
> chapter titles are the corresponding episode titles.

"Did you come for a rematch?" Zuko taunts.

"Trust me, Zuko," Katara says. "It's not going to be much of a match."

And it isn't.

When Kara bends snow to lift Zuko into the air and then throw him against the icy ground, he doesn't rise. 

Sokka would argue that it's fair to leave somebody to freeze to death if he was trying to kill you—and he does argue it, when Aang protests their leaving. But Aang's a twelve-year-old pacifist, and Zuko looks _really_ unconscious, so Sokka gives in when Aang says, "If we leave him, he'll die."

"Well, let me tie him up at least," Sokka says, and he complains as he trudges over to the snowpile that Zuko is buried under. Aang's naivete is going to get them killed someday. It won't, because Sokka will intervene, but still. Sokka reminds himself again that the kid is twelve and afraid, which is a far cry from Sokka's own sixteen and afraid. Sokka sometimes wants to let himself put his head between his knees and hyperventilate, just for the hell of it, so if Sokka's feeling that, how must Aang feel? He reminds himself of that every time he wants to shout at the kid. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't. This time he doesn't shout, and he shoves snow away from the crown prince of the Fire Nation, and he restricts himself to minor grumbling. All of that is cut short when he realizes that Zuko isn't breathing.

Sokka takes Zuko's wrist—no pulse. As loathe as he is to get any closer to Zuko than that, he puts his hand to Zuko's neck, too, two fingers on the pulse point under Zuko's chin. Nothing.

Sokka's baby sister is fourteen. She has just killed a man. Not for the first time in his life, Sokka is consumed with hatred for the Fire Nation. Zuko is facedown, his bruised and scarred face and whatever final expression he'd made in death hidden from Sokka. That doesn't stop Sokka from wanting to take Zuko by the front of his snow-damp shirt and shake him. _Look_ , he wants to say, _Look what you made her do! How could you do that to her!_

When Sokka looks at Katara, there's no judgment in him. It still saddens him when he can tell that she already knows. He will never forget her face just then. There will be more of this. They will have to do more killing to survive this war. Sokka knows—he'd been more than willing to shoulder that "moral burden" himself, even if Aang wasn't. But it's still a sharp and bitter blade in his chest to see Katara looking like that.

This is her first kill, but it won't be her last. She's got to know that by now. Sokka tilts his head towards Aang without breaking eye contact with Katara. _Go on,_ he tries to say with his eyes. _Tell Aang what the reality of the situation is._

"Aang," Katara says, "Zuko is—I—"

She doesn't get to finish her sentence. Zuko's body bursts into flames. Sokka leaps back from the sudden blaze—nothing is ever simple with the Fire Nation, why—and then, just as suddenly as the fire had roared into existence, it finished its—its _cremation_ , fuck—leaving nothing but a Zuko-sized pile of ash. Sokka stares at it, because _what_.

Sokka isn't sure when Aang left Appa, but he's there, all of a sudden, shifting through the ashes like he's looking for something.

"Aang, buddy," Sokka says. Has their resident airbender finally lost it? Is this a cultural thing Sokka just isn't getting? "What're you doing?"

Aang gets his hands on whatever he's looking for.

"Oh, wow," Aang says. "I didn't know Zuko's a phoenix. They're really rare! Do you think he knew?"

"Zuko's a what," Sokka says.

Aang stands up, and Sokka can see a baby bird cupped in his hands. The little chick, under a light dusting of ash, has feathers the color of a sunset.

"We really do need to hurry," Aang says instead of explaining himself. He wanders away from the ashes and toward Katara, who can only stare at him. Sokka watches as Aang deposits the shivering chick in Katara's hands, telling her that phoenixes are not well-suited for cold weather and that he needs to be kept warm. 

Sokka rises from his panic-induced sprawl in the snow and walks toward Katara, too, noticing that the chick cowers away when Katara's mittened hand tries to pet it. She holds it gently to her chest and her wild eyes catch Sokka's gaze.

Sokka shrugs helplessly. He doesn't know any more than she does at this point. 

Aang hops back up on Appa, and Sokka and Katara follow him up. Aang looks over his shoulder from his seated position, Appa's reigns clutched tightly in his small hands.

"Katara?" he says. "Try not to kill him again. Please. Most people don't come back from that. Avatars and phoenixes, but not most people. Okay? You got _really_ lucky this time."

Aang's smiling, but it's pained, forced, maybe even a little miserable somehow. Sokka doesn't like seeing a look like that on Aang's face, so he looks away. There's a lot of weight behind that forced smile. It makes Sokka's stomach curdle with guilt, even though he's got nothing to be guilty for. Katara doesn't either. _Stupid airbenders and their stupid pacifism and moral superiority_ —but even Sokka's mental complaints don't have any heat to them, and he doesn't say anything.

Katara stares down at the bird in her hands for a moment.

"I'll be careful," she says.

Aang commands Appa to take off with his typical, _Yip yip!_ A weighty silence follows. Sokka's sitting next to Yue, who's as prim and proper on the back of a flying bison as only the princess of the Northern Water Tribe could be, and Sokka resists the urge to lay his head on her shoulder and rest. 

"Is that thing really Zuko?" Sokka says after a few more moments of silence.

"Yep," Aang says.

"So—he's immortal?" Sokka says.

"When he dies, he gets reborn," Aang says.

_That doesn't really answer my question_ , Sokka thinks.

"I wonder what came first," Yue says, "the bird or the boy?"

Sokka blinks at her. He'd never really thought of Zuko as a _boy_. Like, okay, he knew Zuko was a guy, but _boy_ felt too young or too innocent for the shouty asshole who kept trying to capture the avatar. Even if that asshole was Sokka's age and not _grown_ grown.

"Zuko is the bird," Aang says, "but his mom probably gave birth to a normal-looking kid, if that's what you're asking."

"Can I hold him?" Yue asks Katara.

"Sure," Katara says, though her tone of voice says, _I'm not sure why you'd want to._

Katara is incredibly gentle and careful, though, as she passes bird-Zuko to Yue, who accepts the tiny chick with equally gentle and careful hands.

"He weighs so little," Yue says.

"Did you know bird bones are hollow?" Sokka says, and Yue's smile says, _Yes, I did know that, but I'm humoring you_. Sokka feels heat creep into his cheeks and looks away with embarrassment. He looks back when Yue nudges his shoulder.

"Do you want to see?" she says. She moves her cupped hands a little bit away from her and Sokka peers down at bird-Zuko, who trembles under his gaze. The first thing that Sokka notices is that the bird's eyes are bright gold. It had been an unnerving color on Zuko's human face, but for a bird that's already painted in sun-colors, the gold eyes doesn't seem so out of place. The crown prince of the Fire Nation is really a bird the size of a fist, if not a little smaller. Wild.

Sokka pokes at it with his finger.

Bird-Zuko cheeps and flinches away wildly, wings flapping in alarm, and Yue brings him closer to her, her cupped hands held over her chest like maybe the warmth of her body will calm him.

"Be nice," she chides Sokka. 

Sokka might shoot a small glare at bird-Zuko for getting so close to Yue, but really, watching Yue gently hold the baby bird, all he can feel is tenderness toward her, and he wants nothing more than to kiss her. She's so kind and good, even to an enemy. He's only known her for a few days, but he wants her, wants to tell her maybe he could love her, ask her if maybe she could someday love him too.

A strange look comes over Yue's face. When she sways, Sokka readily steadies her. He pulls her into his arms when she doesn't protest.

"Are you feeling alright?" he says.

He has just enough awareness to note in the back of his mind that Katara lunged immediately for the chick in Yue's hands when Yue started looking faint, and out of the corner of his eye Sokka sees Katara tuck the bird in her coat. That's checked off his mental list as something he doesn't need to concern himself with; it's taken care of. Yue, on the other hand...

"Something is wrong," Yue says.

"I felt it, too," Aang says from up front.

Yue tells them all of the circumstances of her birth, and the way the moon spirit saved her as a baby. Sokka hangs onto every word. He doesn't know it yet, but he'll be glad, later, that he spends so much time now watching her speak, memorizing every smooth line of her face. He doesn't know it, but they're running out of time.

* * *

It's not until later, after Yue has died in Sokka's arms and the moon spirit has been restored and the city defended and the Fire Nation fleet drowned under the weight of Aang's avatar state, after Yue's father assigns them each a room or two to stay in for the night, that Sokka remembers Zuko at all.

It isn't even until he has knocked on door to Katara's room, which adjoins the room he's sharing with Aang, and he opens the door to see Katara trying to coax the little bird into drinking water she has left for him in a small bowl of ice.

"Oh," he says.

"Sokka," Katara says, looking up at him in the doorway. Her brow creases, and her eyes soften. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," Sokka says, because he Does Not Want to Talk About It. "Whatcha got there?"

"I don't have anything to feed him, so I'm trying to get him to drink more," Katara says, "but he won't _listen_ to me."

"Hold on," Sokka says. He leaves and returns with the plate that bore the remains of their weary midnight dinner. He'd forced himself to eat some of it but ultimately couldn't stomach the rest, and he'd left it on the bedside table and stared at his hands, trying not to imagine Yue holding them one more time.

Katara frowns at Sokka's half-eaten dinner before accepting it and putting it down in front of bird-Zuko.

"Eat something," she commands. "You need to keep up your strength."

Sokka wonders if she should maybe be a little more polite, but that's not really her style, and Zuko doesn't deserve it anyway. The bird tilts its head warily at the offered food before pecking hesitantly at one of the sea prunes. He eats the tiny piece in his beak and waits a moment. Sokka wonders what for. Then bird-Zuko starts pecking at the sea prune more fervently. 

"Hey," Sokka says, excited despite himself, "I think he likes it!"

Katara grumbles something at him about how much effort she'd wasted with the extra water, but she still looks relieved.

* * *

"We probably should've given him to his uncle at the Oasis," Katara says once the bird is asleep in one of her coats that she's draped over her bedside table.

"We were a little preoccupied at the time," Sokka says, "but you're probably right. Think that guy is still around?"

"Probably not," Katara says.

She's right. When they ask around in the morning, the old man has vanished.

"Don't suppose we could leave him here," Sokka says.

"Didn't you hear Aang?" Katara says. "Phoenixes aren't suited for cold weather."

"I know," Sokka says, but he doesn't push it any further. So they're gonna raise an enemy bird. Fine. Another little animal friend for Aang. The kid'll be thrilled. Momo maybe not so much.

* * *

Azula kneels before her father's flaming throne and waits for him to speak. He doesn't make her wait for long. That was always Zuko's game, the one where father made him kneel for hours and hours and waited to see when he'd tremble. Azula's not as annoying as Zuko, so she'd never had his aching knees. 

Part of Father's news is not surprising—her uncle had come back from the war too soft; of course he has betrayed them. He had never seemed trustworthy. Azula knows Father never liked him. She'd known which way the winds were blowing, so she aligned herself with that, too, and told herself her Uncle's wary eyes when he looked her way did not hurt at all. Soon they hadn't; she'd sneered back at him, the fool doting on her older brother. Uncle Iroh's "kindness" had only made Zuko weaker. Zuko would never learn, never get stronger. If Uncle Iroh was doing it on purpose he was needlessly cruel; if he was doing it on accident then he was a fool. Either way, Azula didn't need such a man near her. It was better that he held himself at a distance from her. She tried to show Zuko that their uncle only made Zuko weaker in their father's eyes, but she'd been too late; her older brother imprinted on their uncle like a baby bird, and clung to him in the absence of their mother. Azula sneered at them both.

Father commands her to hunt their uncle down. Readily and happily done. Azula will prove herself.

"And what of Zuko, Father?" Azula asks once it's clear that she is permitted to speak.

Father waves a careless hand.

"He was lost during the seige of the North," he says. "It was Iroh's last communiqué to me before he turned traitor."

Azula holds herself as still as she always does. Her brother is dead. Her uncle is a traitor. Azula knows which way the wind is blowing. She always knows. 

The Fire Lord sees Azula smile at the news. She makes sure that he sees.

"I expect it was the cold that finally finished the job," he says. It's spoken like an absentminded thought.

It is an odd thing to say. Azula does not react to it. But she does not forget. When she next inhales, regular and steady and normal, she stokes her inner fire, lets her breath warm herself up a little more.

* * *

The last letter that Ozai receives from Iroh describes Iroh's attempts to search for Zuko in the North Pole, and that the searches had been futile; Iroh believed Zuko to be dead, after a "noble" and "brave" attempt to invade the Northern Water Tribe's stronghold on his own. There is a brief moment where he considers that Iroh is trying to trick him. But why would Iroh risk writing at all, if he was truly on the run with a living Zuko? No, he would just flee. This is a man consumed by grief and guilt notifying the Fire Nation of the loss of their crown prince. Iroh truly believes that Zuko is dead.

This is not the first time that Ozai's son has died.

At fifteen, Ozai's dalliance with a servant girl resulted in a pregnancy. It was not the first time it had happened, but this particular pregnancy was the first time that Fire Lord Azulon had called him in for a private audience in the throne room, and had forced him to "take responsibility." Their conversation had essentially boiled down to Ozai's father raising an eyebrow, and saying—though much more formally— _Oh, you want to make a habit of this? Well, now you'll have to deal with it_.

Rather than sending the servant girl away, as Ozai had done with the others, Azulon forced Ozai to use his own funds—his royal stipend and winnings from recreational firebending tournaments—to house, feed, and otherwise care for the pregnant girl and the child she would inevitably bear. Ozai drew the line at housing the girl's parents: they would continue to live in whatever not-poverty he assumed they lived in as servants, though he did not forbid her from seeing them. She was Ozai's age, and this was her first child, so her mother came to stay with her during her pregnancy, which Ozai noticed during the visits that Azulon mandated. Oh, Azulon didn't take so much interest as to set up a schedule, but he'd been clear enough, that time in the throne room when they spoke, that this would not just cost Ozai money, it would also cost him time.

The girl bore him a son. Ozai was out drinking with friends from his firebending school the night of the birth, with strict orders to his staff not to disturb him, so he didn't find out until the next morning. He made his way to the dwelling and said, snappish because of his hangover, that he did not _care_ what she named the boy, as long as she didn't pick something ridiculous. She lowered her eyes, her hands carefully holding their infant son, and named him Koji.

Everything about the situation was infuriating. Iroh teased him about it once and then promptly forgot all about it. Azulon made one visit with Ozai to see the bastard boy, and Ozai's teenage fatherhood delighted Azulon to no end, up until he became annoyed with the baby crying in its mother's arms and left, never to return, though he would continue to force Ozai to visit.

The one consolation was that at least the boy was a firebender. At age two, he lit a candle from across the room; while no one could get him to replicate the feat, Ozai could tell, holding the boy in his arms in the visit immediately after, that there was a spark of fire in him. He could be trained when he grew older, Ozai supposed. He could serve as a palace guard, or a soldier. A bodyguard, perhaps, for when Ozai had trueborn children, in the time before his trueborn children were old enough to fight for themselves.

When the boy was four years old, around the time of Ozai's nineteenth birthday, the boy took ill. One of the palace healers attended to him, but he did not recover; Ozai was informed that his bastard son was dying, and so he made the obligatory visit to the girl's house, and he sat stiffly while she wept over the feverish child. There was no one but them and the doctor; the girl's parents had both passed away by then.

"Oh, Koji," she said, crying, holding herself, rocking back and forth, "Koji, Koji, please, stay with Mama, you'll be alright, don't go," and her cries dissolved into unintelligible sobs as the palace doctor bowed and departed, knowing there was nothing else to be done.

"For Agni's sake, shut up," Ozai snapped, and the girl knew better than to defy a prince, so she covered her mouth and stifled her sobs as best she could.

The boy stopped breathing shortly after that, and, after twitching a moment, he went still and his heart stopped. 

The girl broke out into a wail at that before biting her own fist to quiet herself. With her other hand, she reached for the boy, and Ozai rose, intending to send for another servant to collect the body. He would have it sent to one of the cremation sites the peasants use. A bastard would not have a royal pyre.

Ozai spun back around when the boy's body caught fire. The girl was not a firebender—he yanked her away from the body and shoved her behind him, preparing to extinguish the sudden blaze himself. It was not necessary: the flame extinguished on its own a moment later, leaving behind nothing but a pile of ash.

"What," the girl gasped, but Ozai ignored her, his inner flame flickering in a way that made him kneel by the ashes and sift through them. He found, in the center, a baby bird.

It was with a wild, reeling mind that he combed through his memories and his learning and recalled an old legend, thought to be nothing more than a myth. 

This, in his hands, was a phoenix chick.

Ozai had sired a phoenix.

He laughed. He couldn't help himself. He, Azulon's second son, had done what no one else had in at least a hundred years of their recorded history. Phoenixes were myths. But here one was, in his hands. It was _his_. 

"Koji?" the servant girl asked.

Ozai looked at her. She was reaching trembling hands out for the bird, confused and pained and hopeful, and he knocked her hands away. 

"My prince," she pleaded, shock tinging her every word, but he ignored her, and, after tucking the chick in one of his sleeves, he stepped out to call for the guards. 

He ignored her, too, as the guards hauled her away, as she screamed, "My son! My son, give him back! He has my son—you can't let him—Koji! _Koji!"_

To one remaining guard, he instructed to send for servants to clean the place, as his son had passed away, and the girl had gone mad. The guard nodded respectfully but sympathetically and hurried to carry out his orders. Ozai nodded to himself and then rushed as casually as possible back to his own chambers. The servant girl would be institutionalized before the sun rose. Ozai would have no interference with this. The phoenix's mysteries were to be uncovered by him and him alone.

That week, it was with as much subtlety as possible that he reread all the material the palace library had on phoenixes. He read about other mythical creatures, too, in order to make his interest less specific. The phoenix would be his secret weapon against the other nations—perhaps, if he allowed the treasonous thought any room in his mind, against his brother, and Ozai could seize the throne...or, if the opportune moment arose, Ozai could demonstrate the phoenix's power, and Azulon would see that his second-born child was the rightful heir, blessed by Agni with a phoenix son... 

Ozai read, and planned, and kept the bird in his chambers, sometimes in a gilded cage and sometimes in his sleeve or in his lap. He fed it foods that seemed appropriate for birds, certain leftovers he snuck from formal dinners or from snacks he had brought to his room. He took to feeding a few of the birds in the courtyard birdseed, which some of the servants found charming, he knew—not that he cared—and snuck some of the birdseed into his sleeve where the phoenix chick resided, or back to his room if he'd left it caged and covered there for the day.

It was one afternoon he was stroking the bird absentmindedly while reading such a text that there was a sudden cloud of feathers that disturbed his vision, and the weight in his lap was suddenly _much_ heavier.

The bird had turned back into a boy.

And the boy was naked. 

Ozai regarded the first fact first with awe and the second with mild repulsion. He balanced the boy on his hip—more to make sure he didn't startle and try to run than anything else—sorted through a chest of his old belongings, and found a silk robe from when he was this boy's age—four, perhaps. The same age as when the boy had died. He dressed the boy in the robe, tied the sash around the boy's waist, and then sat the boy down in the desk chair. Ozai knelt before the chair so they were eye-to-eye and gripped the boy's shoulders.

This was the same boy as before. Not a thing had changed. His son blinked at him with wide golden eyes.

But the boy did not speak—had not called him his father, had not asked for his mother. None of the texts had been clear about the exact details of rebirth or reincarnation or whatever it was.

"Do you recognize me?" Ozai asked the boy.

The boy shook his head.

"I am your father," Ozai said. "Do you know what you are?"

The boy's face twisted with confusion.

"Your son?" he said uncertainly.

Ozai put the matter of the phoenix away. A child could not be trusted to keep a secret. Ozai would navigate this alone.

"You are a bastard," Ozai said.

"What's that?" the boy asked.

"It means you are not my heir," Ozai said. "You are illegitimate. Your mother was a servant. I am a prince. Do you understand?"

The boy nodded. Ozai wasn't truly sure how much he really got a grasp of, but it was good enough.

"Where's she?" the boy asked.

"She died," Ozai said. 

The lie came easily. He was already making his plans. The boy would be known as another of Ozai's bastards come out of the woodwork, and Ozai would make similar arrangements as before, except he would not be able to produce a mother, so he would hire a nursemaid. Azulon would not pay enough attention to care, as long as the bastard did not interfere at all with the line of succession, which the boy would not. And Ozai had been careful not to sire any new children since that last one, so it was clear that he had "learned his lesson.” Perhaps Azulon might think that Ozai meant even to replace his dead son with this new boy. Ozai did not care if Azulon found him sentimental. Ozai cared only that he could keep this phoenix and utilize whatever secret powers it had.

Azulon reacted with the anticipated indifference and disinterest, asking only, "And what is this one's name?"

Ozai had forgotten to name the boy, who was waiting back in Ozai's chambers, while Ozai had this audience with Azulon. But Ozai was quick-minded and did not falter.

"Yosuke," Ozai said.

Yosuke was a black-haired, bright-eyed thing that became fond of the nursemaid and worshipful of Ozai. He was obedient, quiet, and attentive. Ozai spent much more time with this boy than the last—when Ozai was not training his firebending, competing in recreational tournaments, studying old myths, or politicking, he was overseeing the boy's tutelage. The boy had been given the finest firebending tutor that Ozai's money would pay for, and the boy was doing his best.

By the time the boy turned six, the flaw was evident: the boy's best was not _enough_. He was fine, maybe even adept, but he was not the prodigy promised by his phoenix nature. Yosuke only became more anxious at Ozai's fury with his _ordinary_ progress, and Ozai had to resort to disciplining him, with a hot hand to his arm or a twist to his wrist. This was not the weapon Ozai was promised. Ozai wanted _results_.

It was, perhaps, inevitable that the boy's consistent normalcy was enough of a failure that Ozai lost his temper and burned him to death. Regrettable, but inevitable. It was the day before Ozai turned thirty. The boy was fifteen, and Ozai acknowledged that he was skilled, and well-learned, and a good fighter—but it was not _enough_. And the way the boy would cower before Ozai's impatience with him just sent Ozai into a further rage _every time_.

The details of his death were not suspect—by the time the elaborate celebrations of Ozai's birthday were done, all traces of his bastard son were gone, and the palace historians were notified that it should be recorded that the boy had passed away.

Ozai kept the bird again; the bird turned into a boy again. Zuko was this next iteration. There were...complications. Ozai handled them.

When Ozai burned Zuko during the Agni Kai, when his son was thirteen, Ozai was much more careful. He would not unintentionally burn his son to death here and reveal the little bird that would come from the ashes in front of all of these people. Ozai pressed his hand over his son's eye and did a very controlled burn. _Injure_ , not kill. Blind, maybe. But not kill.

Ozai had thought of killing the boy in private after the Agni Kai and making him new, but Zuko's life, in which everyone believed him to be a trueborn prince, was more public than the previous two boys' lives had been. There were portraits. Someone might recognize the young, new boy as the young-again version of Zuko. Ozai could pass the familiarity off as his own genes with a new bastard son, but... still. It was better not to risk it. Especially after he arrived in the room of his injured son, whose eye had been bandaged and was unconscious with fever, and found Iroh there. Ozai's accursed brother had taken an interest in seeing the boy heal, so Ozai couldn't kill him quietly; he banished Zuko and gave up on this incarnation as a failure. It would shame Zuko. And he'd be deprived of resources. Ozai knew, given some of Yosuke's habits and behaviors and Zuko's after him, that the reincarnations had—not memories, but maybe they could be called—vague impressions of past lives. The Agni Kai and banishment would teach not only Zuko but also whoever would come next to be more respectful.

Ozai took precautions, of course. He planted one or two spies on the ship that Iroh purchased for Zuko, and the spies watched him and reported back, at least to make sure Zuko didn't die. And reveal his phoenix nature upon death, though they didn't know that's what they were watching out for.

Ozai had a vague idea that maybe he would bring Zuko back and kill him at some point in order to retrain him and raise him up as a proper weapon—perhaps once Ozai had won the war, or when he was on the cusp of it. 

For now, Azula is the perfectly-honed weapon; Ozai leaves the throne room after instructing Azula to capture the traitor Iroh, and he knows that although it will challenge her, she will succeed. Zuko is a failure, and perhaps even a monster—certainly inhuman. Ozai is certain that he will never allow the phoenix to be more powerful than him. _Ozai_ will be the Phoenix King. Not the boy. Not ever.

Certainly never, now that he is dead for good.

Ozai waits until he is in his chambers alone to smile. He is thrilled at the idea that Zuko drowned or froze to death at the North Pole. Although Ozai has no more chances of retraining a phoenix, he is now the first man who has killed one. He is the Phoenix King because he sired a phoenix; he is the Phoenix King because he conquered a phoenix. He has resoundingly proven that he is Agni's chosen. He is the Phoenix King twice over. Now all he has left to do is conquer the rest of the world.

And all this cannot overshadow the smaller joy of knowing he has once again won over his older brother. The phoenix's rebirth cycle finished because Iroh could not find Zuko's body—perhaps did not look hard enough, because he did not know that the phoenix chick would be waiting for him. Iroh had come home from the war after Zuko's position in the household had been made concrete; he never knew about the phoenix. Iroh assumed that Zuko had died, gave up on finding the body because he did not know its importance, and the phoenix chick likely died in the ocean or the snow. 

Victory, victory, victory. On all fronts.

* * *

Katara and Aang take care of the bird on their journey to the Earth Kingdom base. Sokka doesn't help. No, really. Maybe a few times, if only during the early stages where Katara's still trying to earn the bird's trust. Bird-Zuko takes to Aang like an otterpenguin to water, but he's still skittish of Katara for a long while. Sokka would bet a pair of socks it's because she killed him, but he doesn't voice this, even though he can tell that they're all three thinking the same thing. Sokka wonders if the bird likes Aang so much because Zuko had chased Aang for so long while he was still living, but since Zuko had been trying to deliver Aang to an unpleasant fate, Sokka bets bird-Zuko's trust of Aang is more to do with some sort of avatar spiritual stuff. 

Bird-Zuko flies for the first time in the confines of their rooms on the Water Tribe ship, and his tremulous leap into the air off a bed, the air catching under his wings and keeping him aloft as he chirped and soared throughout the room, brought a smile to even Sokka’s face. Hey, sue him. The chirping was cute. If human-teenager-Zuko was here, Sokka would never let him live it down.

They keep bird-Zuko secret from Pakku and the others. None of them discuss it—it's just what they do.

Probably a good thing, Sokka thinks in hindsight, because after they arrive at and settle into the Earth Kingdom base, the phoenix chick turns back into a boy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i kind of did whatever i wanted with ozai's age there in the second-to-last section, so if the timeline seems a little out of wack from show canon just know that it's because i'm not very bright
> 
> the transition from yosuke to zuko and how that relates to ursa and azula.... you'll see soon how that happened. more birds next chapter also. you know i vibe with birds
> 
> also sorry but i think it's so funny that teen!zuko's last words are challenging someone to a fight when he's clearly outmatched lmfao


	2. The Avatar State

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for all your comments on the last chapter! I was so happy you've enjoyed my exploration of this concept <3
> 
> I don't normally do this sort of thing, but this would've just taken so long to write in full and I'm very demotivated at the moment, as well as not having as much time to write as I did before, and I recently learned that phoenixes have feminine energy rather than masculine—anyway, for a variety of reasons, I'm posting the remaining chapters as a combination of like, incomplete scenes + summary. sorry lol! again I don't usually do this but I'm just never going to finish writing all of these scenes. 
> 
> content warning in this chapter/outline-thing for a mentioned miscarriage
> 
> also please look at this adorable drawing of phoenix!zuko by @phoiblepnoteworthy on tumblr! [link here](https://foiblepnoteworthy.tumblr.com/post/618595064883593216/i-just-really-love-drawing-birbs-so-heres-me)

Child!Zuko looks to be about seven years old and has no scar. They try to find clothes for him. They call him Zuko because they assume that he remembers who he is; once they realize that he's essentially amnesiac, they tell him that in public they'll call him Li so as not to attract attention to the fact that he's from the Fire Nation. How much do they tell him about who he is? It's heavily debated by the three of them in private. 

...

Maybe they tell him about the scar. And one night, in the Earth Kingdom base they stay at, Aang and Sokka walk in and see him sitting in front of a mirror and covering up one eye.

"Do you remember?" Sokka says. (It's asked with half wariness and half curiosity—Sokka and Katara still aren't completely convinced that Zuko's not just faking his amnesia in order to keep an eye on Aang, but if he really is struggling with his memory, now might be the time his evil self returns, or maybe they'll just get a story about what happened to his face.)

"No," Zuko says. "Do you know what I did?"

"What do you mean?" Aang says.

"It must've been something bad, right?" Zuko says, gesturing to his face.

"We have no idea how you got that scar," Sokka says. "I always figured it was some kind of fight or training accident anyway."

"I must not have been a very good firebender," Zuko says.

He sounds kind of miserable about it, and he's got that sad kid face that Sokka had hated to see back when he was ~~helping to raise~~ training the kids back in the village, so he gently elbows Zuko and smiles at him.

"I don't know," Sokka says, "I thought you were pretty scary."

It should've cheered him up, to be seen as a skilled warrior, but Zuko just looks more miserable.

"Nobody's scarier than me and my boomerang, though," Sokka says, trying a different tactic, and at the reminder of Sokka's shiny weapon, Zuko perks up, clearly hoping to get a demonstration or a lesson in how to use it.

It makes Sokka's heart hurt a little, that reminder of the boys back home, how long they'd lived in fear of the Fire Nation, and how they likely still do, and how Sokka had tried to make them less afraid through warrior training. How he'd tried to make them feel strong, how he'd tried to make it fun. Zuko's not the same, not nearly the same—he hasn't had his culture and family and life decimated by another nation, isn't trying to grow up under that threat—but he's a kid, which is reminder enough.

...

Sokka and Aang each check-in in their own way with Katara to see how she's coping with the Zuko fight back at the North Pole. She knows, logically speaking, that she was right to do what she did—she was fighting an enemy who was directly responsible for invading her home, after it had already been invaded and decimated so many times, and who was in the process of invading the Northern Water Tribe, and who was trying to catch the avatar. She wasn't wrong to kill him. But she's fourteen, and she killed somebody, and she's struggling. She's not sure how to feel. She's doing her best. It helps that she's not alone—Aang's here, her brother is here.

...

Azula comes after Iroh. She initially tries a lie that in the wake of Zuko's death, Ozai would like to put an old rivalry to rest and wants his brother to come home; Iroh knows Ozai would never feel that way and does not believe her. Azula ends up attacking Iroh ferociously. Internally, she blames him for Zuko's death, and so she taunts him verbally about it. Azula mentally compares Iroh abandoning Zuko in the North Pole to Ursa abandoning Azula and disappearing. Iroh is too caught up in his grief and too prejudiced against Azula to realize her taunts come from her own grief. He takes it as a sign that she's happy that Zuko is dead. 

...

_(This part fully-written would've been, like, flashback-esque.)_

Avatar Roku and Ta Min had a daughter named Rina. She married a man named Jinsuk, and they lived together in the village Hira'a. Rina became pregnant with triplets—Dakhe, who's stillborn, and Miraka and Ursa. 

Jinsuk and Rina never expressed any disappointment that Miraka was not born a firebender, but she knew that she was a descendent of Avatar Roku, so she felt like a disappointment anyway. She always dreamed of city life, and she ran away at thirteen and ended up working as a servant in the palace. She was taken in by an older couple who were also servants, and they treated her as their daughter. At fifteen years old, she caught Prince Ozai's eye—he was also fifteen—and she was thrilled by this, enraptured by the idea of being romanced by a prince.

It wasn't quite a romance—but they did sleep together, and she ended up pregnant. She named the boy Koji.

...

At twenty-four years old, Ozai arranges to be engaged to Ursa, who's also twenty-four, because of her lineage. She has little choice in the matter. A few days after the wedding, she notices the nine-year-old boy playing in the courtyard with a servant woman and wonders which lord or lady's child this is. He tells her shyly that her wedding dress had been very beautiful. She doesn't remember seeing him at the wedding, but she hadn't been paying attention much then to anything beyond her new husband and the grief at saying goodbye to her parents. She asks the boy's name.

"I'm Yosuke," he says. "Fire Lord Ozai's bastard."

"It's nice to meet you," she says to cover her shock. 

It becomes clear very quickly that Ozai thinks very intently about the boy when it comes to training him and thinks of him very little otherwise. Ursa had wondered, at first, whether she would resent the child—maybe if she wanted to claim Ozai more, she would've. Or if she'd liked Yosuke less. Or if he'd come into existence because of an affair—but he had not; he was born far before Ozai and Ursa had been married. And he's so full of joy. And, if nothing else, spending a bit of time with him and the servant woman who raises him is decent practice for learning how to someday care for her old children. What could she resent Yosuke for?

Ozai vents to Ursa about his frustrations with Iroh often. Once, in the heat of it, he says, "You wouldn't understand; you're an only child."

Ursa thinks of her sister Miraka, who vanished at thirteen. She thinks of what Ozai had said to her at her wedding, about cutting off all aspects of her life from before.

She keeps any bitterness from coming through in her voice and says, calmly, soothingly, "You're right. I wouldn't understand."

Ozai's attention is on her most when she's pregnant. It's not an unkind attentiveness—he makes sure she has everything she could want or need, and he's never cruel to her. But his gaze still has a weight she shudders under, strains against. 

And then she has a miscarriage.

Ozai is _furious_. He thinks that everyone around him is comparing him to Iroh, thinking him to be the weaker strain of his bloodline, and takes a miscarriage to mean that he still can't prove himself better than his brother. He finds Yosuke comforting Ursa about it and rages at them to get out of his sight, so Yosuke takes Ursa by the hand and leads her to the turtleduck pond. The boy—ten years old by now—seems to always have birdseed in his pockets, and they feed the turtleducks together while she weeps.

...

Yosuke is twelve when Azula is born. He loves the little baby so much—he has minor anxiety about his father replacing him, but he always knew that he wasn't the heir; maybe he's even a little relieved that more attention will be given to the heir instead of him. And she's so little and new, and he wants to protect her and show her the whole world. Whenever he's not with his father or his firebending tutor, he's helping Ursa with baby Azula.

When Azula starts talking—babbling, really—she calls him Koko instead of his full name. Ursa keeps trying to get her to pronounce his whole name, Yosuke, but Yosuke doesn't have the burden of motherhood and doesn't care about making sure her speech develops. He gets to delight in the tiny voice calling for him: Koko, Koko!

...

_(This part fully-written would've been an omniscient third-person point of view, exploring two possibilities of why Ursa disappears, noting that only Ozai knows the full truth, and Azula knows what she overheard in the throne room but keeps the memory to herself. And there also would've been a clearer transition between sections to show that, yes, the author is skipping some details, keeping "What Happened to Make Yosuke Turn Into Zuko Who Is Accepted As Ursa's Kid and the First Born Prince" for a later chapter.)_

Ozai says that Iroh is not fit to lead following Lu Ten's death. 

"How dare you speak about your older brother that way," Azulon says. "I would've expected you to be more sympathetic to Iroh, given the deaths of your two bastard sons." _(Koji and Yosuke)_

"It is precisely because I have felt the loss of two children that I feel Iroh's reaction is unfit of a leader," Ozai says.

"Maybe you don't understand," Azulon muses. "You have never lost a _trueborn_ child, after all."

There are two things Azulon could've said next.

One possibility is that he orders Ozai to kill Zuko, his firstborn. Ozai accepts, knowing privately, of course, that Zuko is a phoenix, and will come back again as a young child. Ursa is horrified that Ozai would kill Zuko, and bargains with him—instead of that, Ursa will poison Azulon so Ozai can take the throne without killing Zuko. Ozai accepts—this just keeps getting better and better.

The other possibility is that Azulon knows that Ozai favors Azula over Zuko, and so in order to make the loss more striking for him, he orders Ozai to kill Azula. Ozai is unhappy about this—Azula is a promising firebender, and if he'd been ordered to kill Zuko, the boy would've just come back again—but he wants to be Fire Lord, and he still has his phoenix, and if Azula is such a great bender maybe he can have another child and this one will be even better than the last, so Ozai accepts. Ursa is horrified by this—maybe she knows about the phoenix, knows the details of Yosuke becoming Zuko, so Ozai tries to calm her down by saying, "Maybe she'll come back; maybe Azula is a phoenix, too. And, if she doesn't, we can always have more children." But Ursa refuses to take that risk, and bargains, and when she says she'll poison Azulon instead, Ozai accepts.

Either way, Azulon dies, Ursa disappears, Ozai takes the throne.

...

Iroh is still on the way home from Ba Sing Se when Azulon dies. When he does eventually return from the war and from his spiritual travels, he meets his niece and nephew, and he senses immediately that Zuko is spirit-touched, even though he doesn't know in what way. It's part of why he takes to him so well—not to mention, it's nice to look after a boy again; it helps soothe his grief after Lu Ten's death. Iroh sees, too, shadows of himself and his ruthless younger brother in Zuko and his little sister, and so does not tend to Azula as much. He favors one over the other.

(Iroh won't reflect on this and realize his error abandoning Azula to Ozai's parenting until much later, if ever.)

...

Aang has a nightmare and talks about how he's afraid of his own avatar state. He and Zuko bond over being afraid of their own powers. Zuko is starting to feel shame that he's a firebender, and Aang remembers his own fear of fire after accidentally burning Katara. Aang doesn't want Zuko to hate his own bending—that doesn't seem healthy—and so he has to start processing his own fear of firebending. His valid fears of the destructive, cruel Fire Nation can be shifted away from the fear of fire, maybe—if only to help this child, and to use the Fire Nation's own flame against them, to stop them from destroying the world.

"After I learn earthbending, we can learn firebending together," Aang says. "What do you think?"

Zuko's excited to learn with him.

...

Sokka, Katara, and "Li" are put in danger by the Earth Kingdom general in order to induce the avatar state in Aang. After Katara calms Aang down from the avatar state, they escape.

Perhaps Aang and Zuko talk again about Aang's fear of his own powers—but Zuko points out that Aang was still trying to save them, even when he was out of control.

...

After his fight with Azula and escaping that situation, Iroh cuts his hair and flees into the Earth Kingdom, resolved to do whatever the White Lotus asks of him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> when azula can talk, I decided that she calls yosuke koko because of [this canon detail](https://non-bender-world.tumblr.com/post/189903771600/finally-i-found-this-post-again-oh-this-is)
> 
> I'll post the notes/summary/scenes/outline/incomplete whatever for the next three chapters/episodes over the course of a few days! if somebody wants to write something inspired by this feel free to do so, just tag me as I'd love to see it


	3. The Cave of Two Lovers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here's scenes + summary for this chapter-episode-thing! this one is mostly scenes actually but i left out transitions and kept some of the scenes shorter than i originally intended
> 
> thank you for your comments on the last "chapter" <3 i'm glad the half-finished version is still a bit interesting haha
> 
> a general reminder that some aspects of azula's character are inspired by [@neuronary's Big Hawk series](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1632730). go read it if you haven't already!

They explain the war to Zuko, why the Earth Kingdom general had cared so much about weaponizing Aang's avatar state. Why they're traveling, why they had left home, why it's so important that Aang find an earthbending teacher—the genocide the Fire Nation had committed, the colonization and genocidal things the Fire Nation continues to do. It won't do any good to cover anything up. Zuko's a child now, yes. But so were a lot of children hurt by the Fire Nation. If Aang and Katara and Sokka keep him around—and none of them want to give the seven-year-old prince back to the Fire Nation, so this is what it looks like they'll have to do—he'll end up seeing the horrors of war anyway. Better get him some of the information now. Zuko listens seriously to what his country has done.

"The Zuko from before was trying to catch me and help the Fire Nation in the war," Aang says. "But you're a new Zuko. You haven't done anything, and you get to decide what you're going to do. You don't have to do bad things."

"You don't have to be what the Fire Nation wants you to be," Katara says.

This, for some reason, feels familiar to Zuko, an old helpless weight—expectations of _do good_ without telling him how. Helping the Fire Nation was what he had done before, they said. He could go back to doing that—the only thing the old Zuko, whoever he was, had done. But they said he could do something else—and it isn't completely unclear. There are other options. Right? At least Sokka and Aang and Katara speak plainly to him. They say what they mean. So, if he asks them...

He looks at Aang, who always smiles at him, even though old Zuko had tried to hunt him. Aang, who's nice to him, who said they could practice firebending together, who faced something scary—going into the avatar state—in order to protect Zuko and Katara and Sokka. Zuko doesn't know if he could ever be that brave. But he does know one thing.

"I don't want the Fire Nation to get you," he says.

Sokka grins at him.

"Well, it should be easier to keep that from happening, now that you're not chasing us anymore," he says.

"What should I do?" Zuko says.

Katara puts her hand on his shoulder, the way she would if she was going to speak intently to a comrade whose spirits she was trying to rally. But also the way she would've to any little child in the village who wanted advice. 

"You can choose us," she says. "We'll... we'll help you. And you can help us."

Zuko nods with determination.

"I'll help you fight," he says.

"Woah, wait, no," Sokka says. "You're, like, seven. You're not gonna fight anybody."

"Why not?" Zuko says, puffing up like a hissing porcu-cat. He says, "I'm not weak!"

"We've got to think _strategically_ about this, little man," Sokka says.

That seems to be the magic word. Zuko listens very seriously and attentively as Sokka starts trying to come up with ideas: if Zuko hides, can he put out people's flames from afar or redirect them? Can he snuff out candles so their opponents can't see?

"Maybe we can get you to turn back into a bird and you can breathe fire," Sokka muses.

They both look at Aang, the resident authority on phoenixes.

"I have never heard of that being a thing," Aang says, "but I don't see the harm in trying!"

"Can I throw a boomerang from far away?" Zuko says.

"Maybe with a little more training," Sokka says.

"What about swords?" Zuko says.

Sokka perks up at the idea of swords before he remembers that, as much as he'd like a sword, trying to keep a seven-year-old from accidentally impaling himself on one would be a nightmare. He shakes his head and says, "Let's not get ahead of ourselves."

...

They stop at a lake. What had happened with the Earth Kingdom general had been—a lot. It's no surprise that Aang starts shimmying out of his outer clothes as soon as he drifts down from Appa's back. He waits until Sokka has helped Zuko down from the saddle and onto the ground to grin at Zuko and say, "Race you to the water?"

Zuko looks to Sokka for—permission? 

"Dude, hurry," Sokka says, and Zuko immediately strips down to his smallclothes and he and Aang take off running.

"Wait," Katara says, "Does Zuko know how to swim?"

Then it's Sokka and Katara who are running toward the water, with a completely different urgency, but Zuko is alright and swimming with Aang. Katara and Sokka each breathe a little sigh of relief. 

Aang and Katara end up practicing waterbending while Zuko and Sokka have their own splash fight. Somehow they end up doing a diving contest, and Sokka finds out that Zuko can hold his breath for a _long_ time, long enough that Sokka almost freaks out. Sokka can hold his breath a while, too, what with polar plunges and other things, but Zuko's so little, he can't believe his little lungs can stand it.

This and the swimming in general raise the question in the back of Sokka's mind how much of the previous Zuko is left in child!Zuko's head. 

"Do you remember swimming before?" Sokka asks.

"No," Zuko says. 

Sokka means to follow up, but then a handful of Earth Kingdom nomads show up, and Sokka has to go back to his job of being the only person in his friend group with a healthy dose of skepticism and common sense.

...

Sokka still stands by his statement that the Earth Kingdom nomads don't seem entirely trustworthy, but after their disastrous attempt at flying over the mountains—in which Fire Nation soldiers almost take them out, and Zuko gets his first look at the Fire Nation's attacks—the group his forced to go back to the nomads and follow their lead. During or after the attack, Zuko hadn't proclaimed a sudden urge to go join the Fire Nation, which was reassuring—instead, now that he's on the other side of the fighting, it seems like it made him more invigorated to protect Aang. 

(Or, well. If "protecting" is his excuse to hold Aang's hand, Sokka's fine with that. It gets the kid to stop trembling, at least.)

"Oh, look, they're back!" Chong, the lead nomad says to the 

At the sight of other people, Zuko releases Aang's hand. Aang allows himself a second to be bummed out before beginning chatting with Chong.

"We decided to come with you guys!" Aang says.

"Good to have you back," Chong says. "Oh, hey, squirt. Welcome back to you, too. I didn't see you underfoot there."

He ruffles Zuko's hair. Zuko steps away from him, closer to Sokka.

"My name's _Li_ ," Zuko says, scowling.

Chong describes the curse of the labyrinth to them at the entrance to the tunnel. Horrible curse, trust in love, blah blah blah. It's immediately more ominous, though, when the Fire Nation shows up and destroys the entrance they had stepped through, collapsing it, trapping them all inside. They've got torches, thankfully—they illuminate the space and take stock of the collapsed rocks.

"I hate the Fire Nation," Zuko mutters, still a bit pale from the surprise of the attack.

"Me, too, buddy," Sokka says.

Once they've recovered from the shock, they move on, and Sokka's attempts to map out their path.

And of course the map is useless, because the tunnels are changing as they walk through them, because why would their awful luck allow for anything else?

...

Azula finishes a round of training on deck with her advisors and retires to her chambers below deck to wash up. Still in pursuit of her uncle, she reflects on her childhood. She had resented, at first, her mother's preference for Zuko, and then her uncle's. But look at what that had gotten him—he had been too sheltered, too weak, and now he was dead. And his _favor_ with their mother and their uncle had not stopped either of them from abandoning him. Azula, on the other hand, had learned early that she should be the gleam in her father's eye, the fire in his hand, and he has always put her to use, he has never forsaken her.

She wonders if their uncle had never come home, would Zuko have been better off. He would still have been weaker than Azula, firebending-wise, but maybe he would've worked harder to impress their father without their uncle in the way coddling him. She supposes it's not worth wondering about—it isn't as if she can change the past, after all.

Her hawk clicks at her from its perch and Azula allows her to come over to her arm. Azula will have to take Swift Hawk above deck soon for her evening meal—she'll launch her into the air and watch as she dives down, skims the water, returns with a fish in her talons. 

Swift Hawk has less red in her feathers than Fast Hawk, her predecessor. Fast Hawk had always seemed as if she was at a low simmer—and had in fact been the reddest of all three of the hawks Azula has ever raised. She got into falconry at a very young age—something denied to Zuko because of his lack of success in firebending, whereas Azula had earned her reward—and her first bird was called Brown Hawk, a hawk with deep brown feathers and a very throaty squawk. Azula had adored the thing. A bit too much—she learned her lesson when she'd made a mistake during firebending training, and Father had the bird killed. She recovered quickly, earned her reward again, and took in the information that this was something she could lose. It was a matter of pride that it was something she never lost again. Fast Hawk, reddish-brown and serious, had died of an illness, some sort of disease birds got now and then. Swift Hawk, whose feathers are the dullest brown Azula has ever seen, is so energetic and lively that Azula has no doubts she will make it through a full twenty-odd years of life. Swift Hawk almost has too much energy. She goes a bit wild if she's cooped up below deck too long.

Her interest in falconry, it could be said, came from how excellent they were at completing their missions. Messengers, hunters. Sharp and bright-eyed and lightning-quick. No one would be wrong to say that's what she liked about the creatures.

Azula has an old memory, though, of playing with a very tiny, very red bird when she was young. Just the vague feeling of soft feathers in her hands, of looking up at something in flight right above her head, playfully out of reach.

She vaguely remembers, too, a teenage boy playing with her before that. Once, when she was a child, while her mother was still around, Azula mentioned it.

"No, that wasn't Lu Ten," Mother had said. "That was Yosuke."

"Who?" 

"Your father had a bastard son named Yosuke," Mother said. "The boy was fond of you. He died," she continues, her voice a bit heavy, "when you were three."

"Did he have a pet bird?" Azula asked.

"No," Mother said. "Your father kept a bird for a little while after Yosuke died. You remember the bird?"

"Not really," Azula said.

Later, while going over one of her tutor's scrolls, she said to Zuko, "Did you know we had another brother?"

"No," he grunted, finishing a firebending kata, one Azula had mastered ages ago. "I didn't."

Azula had smiled. She always felt satisfied knowing more things than he did. She told him about Yosuke, the bastard, who died when she was three.

Zuko wipes sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand.

"That's the same year Mother said that thing happened to me. And I had amnesia," Zuko says. "When I was five."

Azula rolls her eyes.

"Yes, dum-dum, I was three, you were five," she says. "Keep up."

Finished with his required firebending practice, Zuko retrieved his dao from a bench and worked on that silly hobby of his. Zuko was lucky Father allowed his lessons with Piandao at all—and he knew it, too, because he very strictly reserved his sword practice for after he was done with all that was required of him, and he often practiced alone; he never stepped beyond the rules Father set for him with it.

"Piandao said the swords should feel like an extension of yourself," Zuko said.

Azula was mildly irritated— _she_ was the one telling Zuko things right now, not the other way around—but she let him keep talking.

"And they do," Zuko said. "They feel like a bit like talons."

Azula raised an eyebrow, quick to call out his arrogance at comparing himself to a dragon.

"It's not like that," he said. "It's like—like your falcons."

"Hawks," she corrected. She said, "You're not a bird, Zuzu."

"I know!" he said, all scowly, and the matter was dropped.

...

Their luck gets worse—Appa was already making grumbling noises at traveling underground, and the wolfbat and torches don't help, and he causes enough of a ruckus that part of the tunnel collapses. Aang manages to save them, but at a cost: on one side of the downed rocks are Aang, Katara, and Appa, and on the other side are Sokka, Zuko, Momo, and the wildly irritating Earth Kingdom nomads. Chong prooves to be even more annoying with his nonchalance at the situation, but Sokka only shouts at him a _little_ bit to avoid freaking Zuko out. Not that Zuko is freaking out. This is the third inconvenience of the day, and it looks like he's starting to get used to them. Probably a good thing. Momo perching on Zuko's shoulder and nibbling at his ear now and then as a distraction likely helps. 

Chong insists on singing stupid love songs to try to counteract the curse. Sokka's about to lose his mind until he notices Zuko pretending not to enjoy the songs. Sokka thinks back to Chong explaining the curse and remembers Zuko being very attentive to the story. Well, that makes sense. Little kids like stories and plays and songs and all that. Fine. Sokka can put up with it for a little while longer. 

They keep wandering and making music until the torches go out. Sokka has a brief moment of panic until all of a sudden there's a small light—it's Zuko, with a flame in his palm. Sokka cycles through a serious of reactions rapidly—brief fear of sudden fire, relief that he can see, chiding himself for forgetting that Zuko could do that, and then alarm because oh, shit, the Earth Kingdom nomads have seen Zuko firebending. He goes through all of these thoughts just in time for the Earth Kingdom nomads to gasp at the sight of the fire, and for Momo to leap away from Zuko in fear of the flames and land on Sokka's shoulder instead.

"He's not Fire Nation," Sokka says quickly, and he automatically puts himself between the kid and the Earth Kingdom nomads. It's not necessary—he knows they're peaceful and probably wouldn't hurt a child—but after what happened with the Earth Kingdom general, what he was willing to do to them to get to Aang, Sokka just does it without thinking.

Sure enough, Chong says, "We're not gonna hurt him or anything, man. We were just startled. Didn't know he was all—" He moves his fingers in a way that's probably meant to resemble flames and makes a whooshing sound like timber catching fire.

"Oh," one of the women says. "He's from the colonies?"

"Yeah," Sokka says. He adds, "He doesn't like to talk about it," after glancing at Zuko and realizing that although they told Zuko about the colonies, Zuko clearly doesn't really have a grasp of what the woman means. Hopefully that will be enough to keep them from asking him any questions that he won't be able to answer.

"Well, thanks for lighting the way, squirt," Chong says.

"Don't call me that," Zuko says with another scowl on his tiny face.

"Thanks, Li," Sokka says quickly. He takes Zuko's hand—the one not on fire—in his. "Come on, let's keep moving."

...

The badgermoles are a shock. Sokka's glad he's got Zuko by the hand, because when he starts to try to flee it means he's dragging Zuko along with him, not leaving the kid behind. In the process, Zuko knocks over a guitar, and the noise gives the badgermoles pause. It takes a second of quick-thinking and then Sokka's trying to play a song, and the Earth Kingdom nomads join in, and even Zuko has taken a horn off one of the women's belt and is starting to make some not-awful noise with it. The badgermoles must be pleased with their offering, because they transport them the rest of the way. Zuko admires the big creatures with awe. Sokka just wants to get out of here already.

They reunite with Aang and Katara (and Appa), thankfully, and in a rare stroke of good luck, the nomads are not coming with them to Omashu.

...

Ursa kept three-year-old Azula at her side during Ozai's thirtieth birthday celebration and tried to make sure the giggling, excitable little girl didn't get into too much trouble; Ursa didn't want herself or her daughter to be in trouble with Ozai for ruining his big day. Ursa can't help but be a bit irritable. She'd expected that Yosuke would be here. Not at the head table, obviously, but here somewhere. He would've loved to help keep an eye on his half-sister. In fact, Ursa had been counting on his eagerness, and now she was struggling to keep herself pleasant while keeping Azula occupied.

Ursa by now thought of Yosuke almost as a nephew. She'd been endeared by his sweetness, his shyness, and he'd liked it when she spent time with him, and the woman who looked after him encouraged him to befriend Ursa once she realized that Ursa didn't mind. Ursa got the idea that he didn't have many friends, if any. He was caught in that sort of in-between status; as a bastard, he wasn't technically highborn enough to be royal, but he wasn't lowborn enough that the servants felt like they could get too close to him, either. Ursa didn't pay much attention to servants herself but he talked about some of them as if they were fond of him, at least. If there had been more lords' and ladies' children around, that would've been good for him, but they were all off at private schools or on vacations, while Yosuke had private tutors.

And when Azula was born, Yosuke became even closer with Ursa. He was twelve at the time, and the first time he'd been allowed to hold her, he'd smiled so joyfully, so brightly, that Ursa thought he might spit sparks. He didn't even mind when Azula cried, and a weary Ursa was always handing the colicky baby off to either the nursemaid or to Yosuke.

Once, Ursa heard Yosuke whisper to Azula, who was starting to show signs of fire before she even left her crib, "Our father told me you were born lucky." He had this sort of wistful sadness when he said it, and Ursa wondered if he was jealous, but then he continued, "I'm glad. You could be a princess someday, so you'll need it."

Azula babbled something up at him and he lifted her into his arms.

"Oh, you're getting so big!" he'd said. "What a big girl! Do you want to fly?"

And then the boy spun gently with her raised slightly above his head, whistling like birdsong while he did it.

After the feast was over, Ursa kissed Azula's forehead and handed her over to a nursemaid. 

"I looked for Yosuke at the lower tables tonight and he wasn't there," Ursa commented to her husband.

"Oh, yes," Ozai said. "He died yesterday."

Ursa's steps faltered. Her stomach dropped. She regained her composure and hurried to match Ozai's pace again while they walked to their chambers.

"He _what?_ " she said. "What happened?"

"Training accident," Ozai said. 

Servants opened the doors to their chambers and shut them behind them. Two other servants reached for Ozai's and Ursa's ceremonial robes. Ursa allowed the servant to begin undressing her and then sat at the edge of the bed, reeling from the shock of it. Yosuke, dead at fifteen. Just two days ago he'd shyly mentioned to her, when she had asked what he wanted to do when he came of age, that he was hoping to join the palace guard, and perhaps serve as a bodyguard for Azula. And now he was _dead_.

"Will there be a funeral?" she said.

"He's not a member of the royal family, remember," Ozai said, clearly baffled by the question. 

Ursa couldn't bear to look at him. She glanced around the room and caught sight of a birdcage, which _definitely_ hadn't been there until today. A small bird, its feathers the color of a sunset, chirped at her once she looked its way.

...

"Zuko."

A man and a woman loomed over him. The man was bearded and stern, and the woman looked pale and weary.

The boy—Zuko—blinked. "Hello," he said uncertainly.

"It's me," the man said. "Your father. Do you remember me?"

"No," Zuko said. "I'm sorry."

"There was an incident," his father said. "You must've lost your memory."

"Oh," Zuko said.

"Tell him," his father said to the woman. There was a pause. He narrowed his eyes at her, and she spoke.

"You're five years old," she said. "You're—our first born son. No one knows about you yet because we received word of a plot against your life, and so we—told the public a story—about a miscarriage—" it seemed very difficult for her to speak— "and kept you hidden."

"Assassins made an attempt on your life," his father interrupted. "We stopped them. But you were hurt and lost your memory. The would-be assassins will be executed later in the week and we'll announce you as our firstborn son, whom we've long waited to reveal, to the public."

"The public?" Zuko echoed. ( _Public_ was easier to pronounce than _assassin_.)

"I am Prince Ozai of the Fire Nation," his father told him.

Zuko blinked at this before pressing one of his fists into his palm and trying to bow, even though he was just sitting in bed. His father seemed pleased by this, though, so he must've done something right.

...

Things settled down. Zuko wasn't sure why he flinched from fire but he tried hard not to, because his father wanted him to be a good firebender; he was an embarrassment if he was worse than his three-year-old sister. Zuko tried extra hard to love his mother, because he was sorry that he couldn't remember her. It seemed like she knew how sorry he was and loved him back a little extra, too, so he wouldn't be worried about it. Trying extra hard to love his mother became strongly loving her for real, but sometimes Zuko still caught himself watching the servant women and wondering who he was looking for.

...

On the way to Omashu, Zuko very quietly carries Momo in his arms and whispers an apology to him for scaring him with the fire back in the tunnel. Momo squirms a little in his arms before climbing up on his shoulder, biting gently on his ear, and then flying away toward Aang, so Zuko takes that to mean that all is forgiven and perks up for the rest of the short journey.

His good mood vanishes quickly when Omashu comes into view, almost looming, flying Fire Nation banners.

Zuko glances up at Aang and Sokka and Katara's faces and sees them all consumed with horror. His stomach drops. Sokka had said the Fire Nation wouldn't catch Aang now that Zuko was on their side, but here the Fire Nation is again, a step ahead of them. He tries not to feel afraid. He scolds himself, reminding himself to be brave, if only because, at least, it sounds like it wouldn't be _him_ the Fire Nation hurts if they do get caught. He'd be okay, but his—his friends, yes, they're his friends, right?—would be hurt, probably even killed. 

_I won't let it happen,_ he thinks. Sokka may think he's too little to fight, but Zuko will figure something out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for a brief bit of more azula check out [this comment on chapter 1 by @neuronary](https://archiveofourown.org/comments/306771766)


	4. Return to Omashu

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this patchwork of scenes is pretty short, sorry, I don’t remember this episode well
> 
> (thank you for all your comments!! I’ve been too busy to reply lately but thank you! <3)

They’d called Zuko _Li_ while in the company of the Earth Kingdom nomads, and they decide to continue that while sneaking around the conquered Omashu; if a Fire Nation soldier heard Zuko’s name it would cause more trouble for them than they need.

Zuko quietly suggests that he should be Li all the time. Not Zuko anymore at all. The group is torn between a reaction of, “If that’s what you want,” and a reaction of, “It’s okay to be Zuko,” and ultimately settle on, “We’ll talk about this later.” It is, unfortunately, an identity crisis that they just don’t have time for right now.

...

Azula’s advisors tell Azula that she’ll need to be more discreet when trying to catch her uncle; Azula decides to leave her entourage behind and track down Ty Lee and Mai. She brings her hawk with her.

Finding Iroh has become a matter of revenge, and so that's partly why Azula is so relentless at the circus trying to get Ty Lee to come with her. She doesn't have time for petty refusals, she needs to kill her uncle.

...

There are some thoughts and memories that have died with the people who held them close to their hearts:

When Zhao sent those pirates to assassinate Zuko, Zuko immediately knew something was wrong when he saw the bird on the ship—even before he recognized it. That bird was—giving him a look. It was as if someone had ruffled all of Zuko’s feathers. (Why did he think about himself like that? Ridiculous.) And then he _did_ recognize the bird, just in time for his ship to explode around him.

Years earlier, while healing from his lost Agni Kai, while researching airbenders and trying to go to air temples, found himself looking up at the sky, thinking wistfully of flight. It was ridiculous. He was a firebender, not an airbender. But for some reason, he thinks if he took a running leap off that cliffside, he wouldn’t fall.

And before that—Yosuke’s nursemaid, who’d been a mother figure to him, was released from service after his death. Like many others who walk uncertainly from the palace’s gate and failed to find work elsewhere, she ended up in the clutches of her nation’s military. After an incident defending a young officer from a superior, she was demoted, and she was exactly the type of reject lowlife Prince Iroh was looking to hire for the crew of his worn old ship. It had been many years since Yosuke’s death, but the first time she heard the banished Prince Zuko speak in a manner that wasn’t shouting, she almost faintEd; it was like hearing a ghost. She put the thought away. On another afternoon, the prince stood on deck, his unburnt side profile to her, and out of the corner of her eye she was half-convinced, for a moment, that it was Yosuke standing there. _Fire Lord Ozai’s bloodline is strong,_ she thought. She tried not to think of her long-dead charge again—too painful. (Later, Zhao would take charge of the ship for the siege of the North Pole, and she would be too terrified by the sight of that blue spirit rising above the water, drowning the fleet, to wonder if Yosuke would be waiting for her in death.)

...

Katara keeps an eye on Tom Tom, playing with him and trying not to miss the children from her village. She’s resented being forced to look after them—she tells herself she doesn’t have the right to miss them now.

”He won’t be so cute when he’s older,” one of the men of the resistance says. 

As if she needs the reminder that he’s a Fire Nation boy, that he’ll be raised to commit the same atrocities the rest of his people are so eager to do in the name of their nation. 

“He could choose not to,” Zuko suggests. He’d been playing peek-a-boo with Tom Tom a moment who, but he’s stopped to listen.

“Why would he?” the resistance fighter says. “He has everything he could want, profiting off of our suffering. He’ll be raised on fire nation lies and will maintain that for as long as he can, in order to keep his comfortable life.”

Zuko considers that. Not with much complexity, because he’s seven, but—he realizes that Tom Tom will not have an Aang or a Katara or a Sokka who will extend a hand to him. For a moment he thinks, _Maybe someone here_ , but he looks at all the weary, unhappy faces of the hidden resistance. _Everyone here is already so hurt,_ he thinks. _They shouldn't have to do anything else._

So Zuko says, “We’ll win the war.”

“I hope so,” the resistance fighter says, “and I hope that's enough.”

He’s called away to attend to something else. Katara tries to get Zuko to engage with Tom Tom again, but he’s sitting in thought.

“You don’t want to hold him?” Katara says. He seemed earlier like he’d been working up the courage to ask.

“I probably shouldn’t,” Zuko says.

”Oh, here,” Katara says, and she helps Zuko hold him properly. Tom Tom squeals and babbles in their arms. Zuko takes the responsibility very seriously, and his gaze is solemn.

”We could keep him,” Zuko says. “Teach him better.”

”It’s too dangerous,” Katara says. “For him and for us.”

...

It is arranged that Tom Tom will be exchanged for King Bumi. Azula fumes that Mai’s parents did not wait for her arrival before setting up that bargain. What a waste—surely they could have negotiated a little more carefully instead of capitulating immediately—not even capitulating. There were no demands. They proposed themselves that in exchange for their son, they would hand over their greatest pai sho piece. Azula’s father would never be so weak. Certainly not for Zuko. And not even for Azula. 

The toddler has been captured by none other than two water tribe teenagers and a boy dressed in orange. It feels mildly insulting to the Fire Nation soldiers patrolling the city. Unless they’re truly incompetent. If Azula was inclined to stay longer, she’d do an inspection, get them into shape. Nothing but the best for New Ozai.

“You know,” Azula remarks, “it doesn’t seem like equivalent exchange, handing over a powerful earthbending king in exchange for a two-year-old.”

Mai, it seems, is inclined to agree—after a moment, she calls off the deal. Azula eyes Mai speculatively. Is it that Mai doesn’t care at all for her brother? Or is she evaluating the situation from a standpoint of a leader, wondering if her parents actions will be condoned by the Fire Lord? Of course they wouldn’t be—and they’re lucky Azula found out before he did. Mai’s expression has its usual sullen, dull cast; she is as unreadable as ever. 

Azula’s musings are cast aside when the orange-clad boy leaps into the air after the imprisoned king, and his headband slips off when she attacks him—that arrow— _the Avatar_.

The Avatar attempts to break the chains on the King’s metal coffin, and her hawk is there before she is, cawing and swiping at the Avatar with its claws. She calls it back after the Avatar sends it tumbling away in a gust of wind—she sends her hawk to less dangerous grounds, the attack of that funny-looking lemur, and lunges after the Avatar herself with two quick blasts of fire.

The ensuing fight takes them across the city, in leaps and bounds, the Avatar making full use of the city’s many shutes. He has the advantage of having visited in person before, but she had studied blueprints of the city before arrival, and she is her father’s daughter besides; she does not give up easily. 

She loses them eventually, though, catching up in time just long enough to see the Avatar—without King Bumi, whom she will have to find, she notes—leap onto a flying bison. In the saddle already are the water tribe teenagers, the girl holding Tom Tom, and—

And despite not having seen her brother in three years, despite this being a much younger boy than the one she last saw, than the one who should now be dead—she recognizes him immediately.

”Zuko?” she gasps.

Her brother stares back at her, his young face unmarred, with both gold eyes healthy and whole. He doesn’t seem like he recognizes her at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and they escape and Aang takes Tom Tom back, of course, as per the end of the tv show’s episode.


	5. The Swamp

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one is almost entirely summary, sorry! and it's incredibly short. but this is the outline of how the fic would've ended.

Sokka bemoans the _one step forward, two steps back_ way of the universe.

"Zuko's finally not chasing us anymore, but he got replaced with three scary fire nation chicks," Sokka grumbles.

"I'm sorry," Zuko says. "I know if I was bigger I could be more help fighting them."

"Not your fault, buddy," Sokka said.

...

In the swamp, Sokka has a vision of Yue, and Katara has a vision of her mother, and Zuko has a vision of three women he doesn't recognize.

"Koji," one says, her face anguished, and she talks without moving her mouth, and he blinks and she's someone else, someone in similarly simple clothes who calls him Yosuke and doesn't move her mouth at all either. He blinks again and then she's a woman in very elaborate robes. "Zuko," she says, her face as motionless as the rest, "are you playing hide and seek? Your sister is looking for you."

...

The man who emerged from the vine creature, Huu, explained the visions to them. 

“In the swamp,” Huu says, “we see visions of people we’ve lost, people we’ve loved, folks we think are gone.”

Aang didn't know the girl he saw. Huu thinks about it and reasons that she's someone he'll meet in the future.

"I didn't know the woman I saw either," Zuko says. "She kept changing faces."

(Aang remembers the face-stealer Koh, and he looks queasy.)

Zuko describes the woman who called him by different names. Nobody is sure what to say, but Sokka says, "You've got amnesia, buddy. Of course you didn't know them."

Katara says, "That last woman sounds like she was wearing wealthy clothes—could she have been your mom?"

Zuko considers this. "Does that mean my mom is dead?"

"I only ever hear of a Fire Lord, not a Fire Lady," Sokka says, sounding somewhat apologetic.

...

In separate moments, Katara and Zuko talk about having lost their mothers, and Sokka and Zuko talk about how Sokka barely remembers his mother. Sokka's not usually big on doing anything except Suppressing His Feelings, but Zuko came away from the conversation with Katara feeling a bit guilty that Katara's grief was so vast but Zuko doesn't feel much because he doesn't remember a time when he had a mother to lose. He doesn't remember his family at all. Aang pops in toward the end to talk about how family is more than blood--all the airbenders at his temple had been his family, even though he wasn't blood-related to them. He lost them, but he was finding a new family in Sokka and Katara. Sokka makes some sort of joke to alleviate the serious mood, especially because he's embarrassed that Aang had overheard their conversation.

...

Azula, Mai, and Ty Lee travel together hunting the avatar. Ty Lee tentatively brings up what Azula had said in New Ozai, and they say something along the lines of _Zuko is dead; that was just a little kid,_ though of course it looks like it pains Mai to think of him dead, somewhat wistful for what could've been. Azula says, "Of course," and reacts angrily at them for bringing up something that seems like an embarrassment, a slip, a mistake, but internally she knows what she saw. 

She needs to find the avatar not just to catch him but also to get her brother back. He hadn't seemed to recognize her, and she doesn't know what sort of bizarre spirit stuff went down at the North Pole—she hadn't been awake that night, but she'd read the later report about the moon turning red—but she'll get her brother back, and she'll train him right, and father will be proud of them both. She, the elder, the crown princess, and he the perfect little brother, perfect just like her, his little face unmarred. He would never make a mistake again, nothing to warrant their father's fury. Yes. Yes, she will do it; she will win; she will fix everything. She has to.

...

Zuko doesn't mention to any of his friends what his mother said about his sister. If she's really looking for him, then he'll see her again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> that's all, folks! thanks so much for sticking around. if you wanna be sad read ["hawk" by mary oliver](https://jillybooks.wordpress.com/2011/04/24/hawk-by-mary-oliver/) and think about azula


	6. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just jotted something quick down because I missed azula and her new baby brother.

Sokka and Bato stride through the Fire Nation palace halls, both relieved to be out of yet another long negotiation with Fire Lord Iroh. Depowering the Fire Nation military, disseminating information to combat a hundred years of propaganda, quelling the Fire Nation nationalists, withdrawing from the colonies... it’s a lot, and that’s not even poking the concept of reparations with a ten foot pole yet.

Sokka parts ways with Bato, who’s heading back to his guest chambers, probably to write a letter to Sokka’s dad. Katara is with him at the South Pole—rebuilding their home, reestablishing a connection with the North Pole, and training to one day replace Dad as Chief of the Southern Water Tribe—she has a very full plate. Dad and Katara will want an update on the negotiations as soon as possible.

Aang and Toph had been in the meeting this afternoon, too, but they’d already split to go get up to some nonsense; Sokka will probably join them later. There’s there’s somebody he has to go see first.

He hears a familiar trilling as he enters the courtyard, and he finds Azula under a tall tree, standing in casual red robes with a phoenix perched on her arm. The bird chirps at Sokka as he approaches and shifts in place on Azula’s arm. She’s not wearing the proper arm guards for falconry, but there are no scratches on her arms.

“Oh, go on, Zuzu,” she says.

The phoenix launches himself at Sokka, shifting with a sudden cloud of feathers back into a boy in midair, and Sokka has to take a quick step forward to catch him in his arms.

“Sokka!” Zuko says.

“Good to see you, too, buddy,” Sokka says. “How did you shift with your clothes still on?”

“I’ve been practicing,” Zuko says proudly. “Azula says I just have to think about who I am and take him with me.”

That doesn’t make a word of sense to Sokka, but most of what Azula says these days is a mystery to him. He shifts Zuko onto one hip and fishes a scroll out of his bag. Katara’s letters to Azula are another mystery—Sokka can’t imagine what they have in common or how Katara could stand her own grudges, but Katara just shrugged when he asked and said she likes a challenge. By that she claimed she meant puzzling out Azula’s letters; she said deciphering Azula’s thought process these days was good practice for reading deliberately encrypted messages.

Azula tucks the scroll into her sash.

“Zuzu’s been telling me about your little adventures again,” Azula says. “Something about a cave he managed to get himself lost in?”

Zuko shifts back into a bird and drapes himself over Azula’s shoulders. She’d been tense, something Sokka didn’t notice until Zuko’s feathers cloaked her and he curled his little head into her neck and the tension bled away.

“It was a weird time,” Sokka says.

“You might as well finish the story,” Azula says, “since my brother is a bit too preoccupied at the moment to continue.”

“Sure,” Sokka says.

Azula sits at the base of the tree, her brother a warm presence around her neck, and she would look almost regal if not for the way he occasionally rifles his little beak through her hair.

It reminds Sokka of when he and Katara were little and Gran Gran was teaching him how to braid. He’d end up braiding and rebraiding it sometimes to help calm her down when she was upset, before she learned to braid her own hair, before she started trying to navigate her sadness by herself. He misses his sister—but he’ll see her soon.

Sokka settles onto the ground and thinks about his tribe’s oral storytelling traditions. Nothing he knows better than how to tell a good story.

Zuko trills again a few times before quieting down. Somewhere in the middle, even though she isn’t alone—or maybe because of that—Azula dozes off and falls asleep.


End file.
